Uzbekistan state world languages university translation faculty english language translation theory department

CHAPTER I. CHALLENGES OF TRANSLATING NEOLOGISMS
1.1 The translation of neologism
Neologisms are perhaps the non-literary and the professional translator's biggest problem. New objects and processes are continually created in technology. New ideas and variations on feelings come from the media. Terms from the social sciences, slang, dialect coming into the mainstream of language, transferred words, make up the rest. It has been stated that each language acquire 3000 new words, annually, but in fact, neologisms can not be accurately quantified, since so many hover between acceptance and oblivion and many are short-lived, individual creations. In other words, Neologisms are new words, word-combinations or fixed phrases that appear in the language due to the development of social life, culture, science and engineering. New meanings of existing words are also accepted as neologisms. A problem of translation of new words ranks high on the list of challenges facing translators because such words are not readily found in ordinary dictionaries and even in the newest specialized dictionaries.A ‘neologism’ is the name for a newly coined expression, term, word, or phrase.¹
A ‘neologism’ is the name for a newly coined expression, term, word, or phrase: it may not yet be accepted into mainstream language, but it’s in the process of entering common usage. Translators who work in the scientific and technical fields are always coming across difficult words to translate. This is not necessarily because of the specificity of the text; it’s also because most research and discoveries in these areas often come from foreign countries.
And many times the recent discovery hasn’t given the target language sufficient time to determine the appropriate term to describe these events. So, this means that the presence of neologisms in both the scientific and technical fields is fairly common; so let’s see how translators handle these issues. The translation of neologisms tops the list of the most difficult matters which translators face. Neologisms are widely known as new words or new meanings of words already existing in the vocabulary which have not yet entered into the common use. Obviously, English dictionaries cannot register immediately all new words, figurative phrases and nonce words which annually enrich our vocabulary by tens of thousands of new words. As a result, translators need to rely on the context and try to transfer the meanings of neologisms into the target language instead of looking them up in the other, often less reliable sources, including online dictionaries. It means that they have to “invent” new words following some word-building patterns or explain English neologisms using the descriptive method.
The origins of neologisms are often roughly divided into two groups: linguistic and extra-linguistic which are, however, inseparable. Various types of word-building and borrowings refer to the first group, and the extra-linguistic sources can be of political (glasnost), economical (forex = foreign + exchange), social (hipster), scientific (dilitancy), and technological (FOMO, “Fear of missing out” ¬– related to social networks) origin. Nevertheless, it does not mean that neologisms coming from extra-linguistic sources cannot be a result of word-building which shows the interconnection between these two factors.
Generally speaking, there are four methods for translating neologisms: selection of an equivalent in a target language, transliteration and transcription, loan translation, or claque. The first method is the easiest one. If the word is fixed in the dictionaries, there is usually no problem with finding equivalents. Nevertheless, it is not always possible to find an appropriate analogue in the target language, which can be explained by different cultural levels or even political situation in the corresponding countries. Without any background information about the meanings of new words, translators risk to misuse the words in the target language. It is especially important to check them while using the descriptive (explanatory) method of translation. This method is seen as the most productive in English-Uzbek translation due to absolutely different means of expression in both languages. Sometimes a whole sentence is needed in Uzbek to express the meaning of just a couple of words in English.
The so-called “language conciseness” typical for English makes the translators to use two other methods: transliteration and transcription. Transcription helps to maintain the sound form of the source word with the help of another script, while transliteration implies transformation of letters into another alphabet. In practice, both methods are often combined. It is worth mentioning that many English letters and sounds do not have exact analogues in Uzbek and, thus, some words can have two or more transliterated variants in the target language.
Loan translation does not change the original word at all. This method concerns the borrowings from different languages which preferably need to be preserved due to the absence of the original concepts and notions which are borrowed as well.
So the most important rule that we should respect while translating neologisms is transferring the meanings of words from the source language into the target one and, according to Günter Grass, trying to translate them in a way that will not change anything. It is often quite easy to do it because of loan words and such methods as transliteration and transcription. Nevertheless, descriptive translation is a more difficult method and involves close work with explanatory dictionaries. Neologisms can be defined as newly coined lexical units or existing lexical units that acquire a new sense. In other words, Neologisms are new words, word-combinations or fixed phrases that appear in the language due to the development of social life, culture, science and engineering. New meanings of existing words are also accepted as neologisms. A problem of translation of new words ranks high on the list of challenges facing translators because such words are not readily found in ordinary dictionaries and even in the newest specialized dictionaries. Modern period is significant for our interest due to the fact that the English language has become the means of international communication and started wielding influence on the languages of the world, unlike the previous periods when it chiefly was under the influence of the ancient languages and those of its neighbours. This fact, for example, may explain why the neologisms appear mainly through the means of world building – conversion, derivation, composition etc – and not through the process of borrowing, but the latter still exists as well, though on a smaller scale. So, the neologisms in modern English are created first of all with the help of its own resources.²
The list of the neologisms found in the British newspapers The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer and Herald Scotland is added in the Appendix A. The list does not claim overall completeness or fullness, but it, however, might be a suggestion for lexicographers in their work of compiling or supplementing the dictionaries.